


Five times the Warden can’t speak her heart, and one time when she makes it close

by Maybethings



Series: Grey Warden and Short Taarbas [9]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/M, Fics for Pics, Fluff, Pic Fics, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maybethings/pseuds/Maybethings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natia Brosca has a hard time speaking her mind. Sometimes. Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five times the Warden can’t speak her heart, and one time when she makes it close

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Brosca/Sten headshot commission](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/15573) by Jakface. 



**i.**

It’s hard to say who’s more surprised when the metal breaks under the dwarf’s sword pommel: the man who calls himself Sten, or Natia Brosca herself.

“So I am released, am I?” he asks, unmoving from his spot.

“It’s not ideal,” she admits, still breathless with what she’s done. He’s certain to say  _something_  and she wants to get it all out before that happens. “The Reverend Mother wouldn’t give us the key.”

“I expected she would not. Yet you broke the lock. Why?” He has a completely valid point. They could have left him there to die. No one would be the wiser. The world would move on, less one murderer of farmholds.

 _Because I know what it’s like to be in a cage, and abandoned to die, and nobody deserves that,_ she wants to say.

“Because,” Natia stammers instead, “I am a Grey Warden. I—we need your help, and your strength against the Blight. Why don’t you come with me?”

Sten grunts, and takes a step out of the cage, ducking his head. “Then I will follow.”

**ii.**

She turns from the fire and the party’s quiet banter to see Sten looking out into the darkness, back turned to them. It’s the most heartbreaking thing in the world, and her face goes suddenly hard.

Excusing herself from the circle of light, Natia walks up to him, tapping the back of his arm. He turns, and only then she realises she hasn’t quite thought this through.

 _You’re not alone, you know. I’m here too,_ she wants to say, but actually voicing this would make her fall up into the sky with embarrassment. She tries not to blush as she asks him “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” he lies. Maybe he’s lying.

“Then at least look at nothing next to the fire with the rest of us, why don’t you?”

Sten doesn’t laugh or smile, but he joins the rest of them beside the flames. (Odd how they seem warmer now.)

**iii.**

“I see the way you look at him,” Leliana says, gently teasing. “I think everyone does. But what’s there to love about Sten? He’s so…Qunari.”

Which, to the little casteless dwarf, means strength and confidence and ferocity in battle. It means the smell of tea and incense and the sea, straight white braids and piercing violet eyes that look right into her soul. It means the back that stands alone, shrugging off all comfort, the anchor in a storm, a blade at her side and a bunch of wild fennel and quiet words that he trusts to nobody else’s ears. It means the sharp-edged, chaotic buzz of the world dropping to a reverent hush. It means  a place in her heart that he fills with no effort at all.

“I can’t really say,” Natia shrugs, polishing her sword and taking silent pleasure in the way Sten draws Asala, slow and careful, and tends to the blade of his soul.

**iv.**

She shows up in his room the night before the forced march, quite unwilling to stay near…whatever Morrigan intended to do with Alistair that night. “What is your wish, _kadan_?” he asks.

“I can’t sleep,” she says, and it seems quite obvious to her that he knows she’s forcing her smile. “Will you sit up a while with me?”

He does.

She wakes the next morning curled up beside him. He’s already alert and watching the movement of the clouds in a red-grey sky.

“The battle has come,” she says, in a voice so calm she can’t believe it’s hers.

“It always comes,  _kadan_ ,” Sten replies, his arm blessedly warm around her shoulders. Strong. She takes it for her own, just for a moment, before she buckles on her armour again and leads the army over the bridge.

**v.**

The darkspawn horde is upon Denerim now, crawling through it like deepstalkers through the old thaigs. The odds are hardly favourable, but they will fight nevertheless. Such is the nature of men, to throw themselves into the most hopeless of situations, for a single fragile reason.

Hers is the smell of tea and incense and the sea, and so many things yet unsaid and unasked.

 _I love you_ , she starts to say, but the words die in her throat, even now. No weakness. No emotion. Not here.

“I’m proud to have been your  _kadan_ , Sten,” the Warden says, gripping her blades in both hands and pulling them free for the fight. “Whatever might happen after this.”

He draws Asala, her blade gleaming under the odd, sickly light of day. “So am I, Warden.”

**vi.**

Sten’s dying, and Natia doesn’t need his strength any more—but she lays her head on his chest anyway, as if she could give him hers instead. She tries not to cry, not before him; even if it is his for the briefest of moments, let his last memory of her face not be marked with pain.

The world would move on less one person. But it left a hole, a ragged void with another.

She doesn’t have to speak it out loud, because it’s in every breath, every heartbeat, every thump of her pulse in the fingers she has pressed to his shoulder:  _I love you, I love you, I love you, I will never love another like you._

“I’ll never forget you,” she says instead, her tears soundlessly soaking into the collar of his coarse shirt. She’s not sure if Sten still hears her—but he does.

He rests his dark hand in her hair, tangling his fingers gently into her braids. And there it stays.


End file.
